Promoting education, advocacy and support: the Canadian experience

For the past 3 years, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), a national voluntary organization, has coordinated an early psychosis intervention project intended to raise awareness, enhance family coping skills and promote the availability of and access to appropriate early psychosis services across Canada. Funded by Health Canada, this project has achieved breadth and depth of impact through Canada‐wide networking and dissemination of resource materials coupled with targeted local‐level activities at three CMHA sites. With a strong orientation toward increasing community capacity to understand, identify and respond to first episode psychosis, project activities have included: creating and broadly distributing print materials in English and French (hard copy and web) conducting educational workshops with community members and gatekeepers identifying advocacy opportunities and pursuing advocacy initiatives regarding policy and practice and supporting the development of first episode family networks across Canada and with them, creating and disseminating innovative family support resource materials. This poster session will present the process, products and outcomes of the project which can serve as a valuable model of a national level initiative and its evolution.